well, thx for your many answers.
What I didn’t consider was that players yoyoing alone in their bedroom.
Gamers play in their bedroom as well, but they share on line.
Maybe this’s the point. To rise the yoyo comunity you guys have just to play outside your bedrooms!
That’s it!
Play on street, at the bar, at the university. Share your fun.
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I also play in my kitchen and backyard! 
This is a fun hobby to share, though. I like to bring a handful with me when I go to scouting events.
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This conversation reminded me of Mark McBride’s Fiend Magazine from the 90’s boom. In issue one, he write this to describe what it means to be a “fiend” (dedicated yo-yo player). It occurs to me that I referenced Fiend (and this passage specifically) in an old blog post which is also kinda relevant: ed [...]: yo-yo #85: Fiend Spitfire
What is a FIEND?
A Fiend is into playing in a deep and serious way. He (or SHE) recognizes that yo-yo (or juggling, or top spinning or whatever prop you choose) is about more than just contests or lists of tricks. Those are merely tools to help you achieve the real “State of Yo.” You really get it when you’re throwing and you become one with the forces of nature and physics that make it all possible-your movements are a dance with infinity. You are surfing the wave of reality. The trick doesn’t need a name, you don’t need an audience, you’ve moved beyond all that. You just know that THIS IS REAL. An old Hindu text asks, “what is the difference between the dancer and the dance?” A Fiend answers “nothing.”
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We could have something like this. The Misfits are a punk rock band from Lodi, NJ and have been active since 1977.
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Man I love this Ed. 
bending air with your yo
I love this!
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Has anyone else here achieved yoyo enlightenment?
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The trick doesn’t need a name, you don’t need an audience, you’ve moved beyond all that
This is pretty much where im getting with throwing. I wouldn’t say that I’m there, but I’ve experienced little bits of this.
I [personally] would consider yoyo to be meditative, but not necessarily enlightening.
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Idk, maybe im just delusional but im pretty sure that I discovered the mystery of the universe last night while yoyoing.
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And then of course, there’s always the Book of Yo.
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I think that image might be photoshopped… ed doesn’t use black strings.
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I like the ink on the ring finger
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I feel enlightenment is plane in which there is no time only a state of pure joy - satori
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What book is this, exactly? Is there a link?
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It’s called “The Book Of Yo” by Neil Feser w/ forward by Tom Smothers & Intro by Tom Kuhn (who also edited it). It was published in 1999. I’ve seen only a few copies.
It’s an odd book which takes a crack at comparing the philosophy or mindset of [pre-y2k] yo-yoing with the spiritual and physical disciplines of china (taoism & tai chi) & japan (zen buddhism & aikido) through a combination of short essays and prose-poetry. I love it, not as an actual philosophical text, but as a window into a mindset like Tom’s, who truly has seen yo-yo both as a toy AND as a means toward personal and even spiritual development.
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A companion book to this would be, if you can find it, The Yonomicon by Mark McBride (1998). An extremely technical manual with a soul.
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I love what you wrote guys, but my question wasn’t “What’s your yoyo philosophy?”, but, “What is the philosophy that unites everyone?”
Many hobbies and sports have something that keep all the players united, what is it in yoyo?
The only thing that keeps a hobby community together is the love of the game. There is no singular philosophy to any of them. As outsiders we may have a perception of a community as a whole, but that’s because we have little insight to that community.
I think this is because Skateboarding is a sport (football, soccer) and not a skill toy (kendama, cubing, juggling, yo-yo).
This review of the movie Minding the Gap reminded me of that:
Minding the Gap
Like most kids of my generation, I tried skateboarding. I had a buddy who had several boards and he always wanted to skate, so when I went over to his house I’d try it. I wasn’t great, but I wasn’t bad, either. Still, it never took with me the way it does for some kids. I sometimes wondered why. Minding the Gap suggests a reason I had never considered before: I was fortunate enough not to have something to try to escape from. That’s what skateboarding is for the men of Bing Liu’s bracing documentary about his clique of childhood friends and their slow crawl toward maturity. Skating isn’t about tricks or cool sneakers here. It’s about feeling, however briefly, like you are free and in control of the world.
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